Bill Ford Jr., executive chairman, reassured attendees at the company's annual meeting in Delaware Thursday that "we're on track to have a very good year in 2015," as quoted by Bloomberg. "If people are paying attention, I believe the stock price will take care of itself."

At around $15.50, shares are down by less than 1% for the year to date and down 1.9% for the past 52 weeks. By comparison the Standard & Poor's 500 is up 2.3% for 2015 and over 13% for the past 52 weeks.

Mark Fields, chief executive officer, presided over the first shareholders gathering since the retirement of Alan Mulally. Mulally was widely credited for steady leadership during and following the global financial crisis, when Ford suspended its dividend, mortgaged most of its assets and sold its Volvo, Land Rover, Jaguar and Aston-Martin luxury car brands.

A shareholder proposal to end the Ford family's control of the automaker by its ownership of a special class of stock with super-voting powers failed, though by a narrower margin than in previous years. Those in favor of canceling the super-voting shares accounted for 36.3% of the votes cast, up from 34.4% last year and 33.4% the year before.